Whale

“ As soon as the whale feels the sharp lance in its body it dives as it would in the open sea; but the water is so shallow that it strikes its head against the rocky bed of the sea with such force that it rises to the surface again half stunned. ”

“ No creature could endure such savage ferocity and such united attack. The immense whale threshed from side to side, always round the vessel, which seemed still to carry to her the scent of the baby whale. ”

“ In this way it spouts the water in beautiful jets from twenty to thirty feet in height. The voice of the whale is like a low murmuring: it has a smooth skin all over its body, under which lies that thick lard which yields the oil for which they are so much sought. ”

“ We have dominion over the fishes of the sea, we strew the net and bring them in for our food; we hunt the whale for his oil and for the fringe of bone in his mouth; we dive into the sea after the oyster that we may extract from it the pearl, and we strip the shell of its rainbow-coloured scales to inlay therewith our furniture. ”

“ For even when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary’s in the desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with rain. ”

“ Not having hands as we have, who, God be thanked, can scratch ourselves when we feel an itching, the whale tries to mitigate his pangs by placing himself against the protruding and sharp angles of a rock of ice, and by there rasping his back with a real fervor and with vigorous movements up and down, as we see the dogs rasping their skin against a bed-post when the fleas bite them overmuch. ”

“ Ork, physeter, sea-serpent, shark, and whale.
XXXVII
"There we behold a mighty whale, of size
The hugest yet in any water seen:
More than eleven paces, to our eyes,
His back appears above the surface green:
And (for still firm and motionless he lies,
And such the distance his two ends between)
We all are cheated by the floating pile,
And idly take the monster for an isle. ”

“ It is upon these creatures that the whale feeds. Opening its mouth wide, it rushes through the sea, and takes in a crowd of these soft-bodied animals, along with the water in which they are swimming. Closing its mouth, it drives out the water through its plates of whalebone, and the little creatures are caught in the bristles as in a net. Its great tongue is lifted up, and crushes them all into soft pulp, which is easily swallowed, even down the whale's small throat. ”

“ What is a whale? Well, although the whalers dub it so, it is not a fish, but is a true mammal, the last of the mammoth creatures that trod the earth and floundered the seas of a past age. The whale is the biggest, the meekest, and the most interesting of living animals. As we go north, we readjust all our ideas of distance and immensity. Rivers are longer, lakes more majestic, and whales bigger than we have ever dreamed. ”

“ And all we could do was watch and pray for a sperm whale's spout—or news.
It was whaler's luck of the vilest sort; and, though many a volunteer
Spent his watch below on the look-out, never a whale came near,—
At least of the kind we wanted: there were lots of whales of a sort,—
Killers and finbacks, and such like, as if they enjoyed the sport
Of seeing a whale-ship idle; but we never lowered a boat
For less than a blackfish,—there's no oil in a killer's or finback's coat. ”

“ Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly ”

“ Driving with open mouth through the congregated shoals of these little creatures, the whale engulfs them by millions in his enormous jaws, and continues his destructive course until he has sufficiently charged his mouth with prey. ”

“ A whale can throw a stream from its snout for about five rods, but when it strikes land that way under heavy ballast it chucks all its load, water and solids, like a torpedo hitting a ship. I have experimented with small whales—say from ten to twenty feet over all, and never knew one to miss when he bumped land. The whale was prepared especially to do that—to release Jonah, and does it with wonderful automatic economy—the same that we scientific men note throughout nature. ”

“ As I told you before, the whale is the staple of this island. You observe that his skin serves us as a house; from his bones we form all our implements—from his sinews, our thickest ropes down to our finest thread. The dress we wear is composed of the belly-part of the skin, dressed with a sort of soap, composed of the alkali obtained from the sea-weed which abounds in the lake, and the oil of the whale. ”

“ By this line the stricken animal tows the harpooner’s boat along with fearful rapidity, an immense wave curling far above the high bow. The flesh of the young whale is excellent,—very like veal,—and with the black population the whaling season is one of great feasting and enjoyment. ”

“ They eat their way into the whale and climb about its stinking carcase, and come out again greasy and odoriferous, and eat and sleep. The pretty native girl joins the rest, and yet her greasy perfumed beauty is undimmed in the eyes of her husband. ”

“ There seemed to be whales everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, and all tame—just rolling and snorting in the water they lay in; once in a while one would jump like a trout and make a splash like a waterfall, just to amuse himself. ”

“ In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across. ”

“ IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small ‘Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear, so as to be out of harm’s way. ”

“ The great Whale, and the Porpoise, and the hungry Sharks, all play round the great Ship, and seem to wonder what mighty thing it is that is swimming through the sea and keeps always on the top of the water, not sinking down and coming up again as they do. ”

“ Sometimes I fish in the sea, but seldom, for it is a far row for me to the sea. I catch there herring and salmon, porpoises and sturgeon and crabs, mussels, periwinkles, sea-cockles, plaice and fluke and lobsters and many of the like. It is a perilous thing to catch a whale. It is pleasanter for me to go to the river with my boat than to go with many boats whale-hunting. ”

“ The whale becomes exhausted from the blood which flows from his deep and dangerous wounds, and the two hundred fathoms of line belonging to the overturned boat, which he is dragging after him through the water, checks him in his course; his pursuers again overtake him, and another harpoon is darted and buried deeply in his flesh.
13. The fatal lance is, at length, given; the blood gushes from the nostrils of the unfortunate animal in a thick, black stream, which stains the clear blue water of the ocean to a considerable distance around the scene of the affray. ”

“ A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam. ”

“ A whale needs no re-incarnation theory of the theosophist, for he crowds enough experience into one sea-life to satisfy the fact-thirst of the greediest little Gradgrind. Fancy, thrashing the sea for a thousand years! ”

“ Look at those enormous lips standing up. The whale drops his lips until they lie flat, and then, swimming slowly along, the small molluscous animals on which he lives drift into his mouth. When he thinks he has enough for a mouthful, he raises his lips, and with his great tongue forces out the water between the plates of bone, through the mat of fibres. The mollusca are caught on the fringe, licked off, and swallowed. Seems like small food for such great animals, perhaps, but this is their mode of living."
FRONT VIEW OF THE MOUTH.
"Is this one a right-whale, Uncle Horace?" ”

“ As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we thus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; ”

“ In every part of the structure of a whale we see the result of two principles acting and reacting upon each other—on the one hand, adherence to type, or rather to fundamental inherited structural conditions, and, on the other, adaptation to the peculiar circumstances under which it lives, and to which it has become gradually fitted. The external fish-like form is perfectly suited for swimming through the water ”

“ that seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. ”

“ Eventually the whale, weakened by loss of blood and by fright, would die and then came the chore of hand pulling the whale ashore for feasting and reprovisioning 38 the village’s storehouses. The captain of the boat and his crew were considered the most skilled and important of the hunters. Whaling was an ancestral skill which was passed on generation to generation with great care. ”

“ Here they station a man on the look-out. They are aided in catching sight of a whale both by his size and the water he spouts through his blow-holes, which is more than a puncheon at a time, and two lances high. ”

“ The outside of their body takes on the appearance of a fish, but inside they have the true lungs, the four-chambered heart, and all the complicated machinery of a warm-blooded animal. Therefore, though a whale may dive deep and remain below to seek its food, yet before an hour has passed even the largest of them must come floating up to the top again, to blow out the bad air through the nostrils at the top of the head, and fill the capacious lungs with a fresh supply. ”

“ I shall lend you a boat, however, and if you meet the whale and think your lives are in danger, then you can name me by name.’
They thanked her greatly for her help and advice, and set out from the island, but on the way they saw a huge fish coming towards them, with great splashing and dashing of waves. They were sure of what it was, and thought they had as good reason as ever they would have to call on the Witch, and so they did. The next minute they saw coming after them another huge whale, followed by fifteen smaller ones. All of these swam past the boat—and went on to meet the whale. ”

“ Nevertheless it is so, for seals and whales are as truly flesh-eating milk-givers as bears and wolves. "Do you really mean, then," exclaim nearly all people who are not naturalists, "that a whale is not a huge fish?" Certainly I do! A whale is no more a fish than crocodiles, penguins, or seals, are fishes, although they too live chiefly in the water. ”

“ In looking up the life history of the white whale when opportunity offered, during the last twenty years I have consulted many old whalemen, and they all say that whales of all kinds take their babies on their flukes and scull them along as my female sculled her dying and dead partner. ”

“ The object is to meet the whale, and come down upon him in front; none but a lubber or a knave would cross his wake; for his eyes are so placed that he can see laterally and behind better than straight before him, and the moment he detects a boat in pursuit he begins to run. ”

“ The whale, having no air-bladder, can sink to the lowest depths of the ocean; and mistaking the harpoon for the teeth of the sword fish or a shark, he instantly descends, this being his manner of freeing himself from these enemies, who cannot bear the pressure of a deep ocean: and from ascending and descending, in a small space, he puts himself in the power of the whaler ”

“ The downward course of a whale is, however, the most common. A whale, struck near the edge of any large sheet of ice, and passing underneath it, will sometimes run the whole of the lines out of one boat. The approaching distress of a boat, for want of line, is indicated by the elevation of an oar, to which is added a second, a third, or even a fourth, in proportion to the nature of the exigence. ”

“ Let us look at a whale. Its body is cone-shaped; the head is very large, sometimes one-third of the animal’s entire length; there is no notch of the body to mark the neck; [79] the body tapers to the tail, which is widely expanded on each side into what are called flukes, and thus becomes a very strong propeller. Just behind the head we find a pair of fore limbs, called paddles or flippers. These are flat and oval, and have externally no marks of joints, fingers, or nails. ”

“ A manual of natural history, of no ancient date, lies before me as I write, and when I turn to the section which treats of the whales, I find an illustration of a Greenland whale, which is represented as lying high and dry on the beach, but which, despite its stranded state, appears in the act of vigorously puffing streams of water from the blowholes on the top of its head. ”

“ That the whale entirely understands the mechanism of his own capture is beyond dispute. To swim backward and forward beneath a floe, in the hope of cutting the rope against the sharp edge of the ice, is a common device of the creature after being struck. ”